A century of exiles, the exile as the Mankind's quest for its own humanity

Résumé du document

Exile has appeared repeatedly in many myths inspired by individuals, since the birth of the most remote civilizations in history of Mankind; between pain and dreams, hopefulness and death, and desires and disillusionment. Since our origins, the literature has inherited this founder myth, in the sense that it founds the human condition, and is interpreted and reinterpreted through generations. Yet, the twentieth century is to be considered the very century of exile. In History of modern time as well as its Arts, the millions of exiles caused by the two Great Wars, the burst of the Empire or later the colony along with Totalitarianism, censorship, and genocides, marked the minds of this generation and especially numerous artists for they were often the first to be targeted in those tearing events. Nedim Gürsel, a Turk writer exiled in France for political reasons, asserts that "Literature of the twentieth century is mostly a literature of exile where different sensitivities find an expression through a common destiny: departure and wandering." Indeed, the exile represented through all the works studied this semester, is a non-exhaustive but telling sample of modern literature. The modern heroes commune one to the other in loneliness, isolation and wandering. From the lost K. to the decadent Clamence, going through the isolated and lonely shimamura, we are being told more than the indisputable painful experiences of their creators, but at stake is the condition of men, our Humanness.

Extraits

[...] Yet, the exile is not simply a literary and aesthetic posture. As it was already suggested upper, is a compelled meeting with Otherness, the difference and the indifference, and hence tread the field of Ethics. According to Levinas, whose life can easily be described as a succession of exiles, Ulysses is not such a figure of the exiled, for his travel ends in its return to his native island. In front of this “complacency in the Same, unawareness of the Other”[10], Levinas prefers Abraham who goes toward the unknown. [...]

[...] Bibliography http://www.philosophie-en-france.net/Etudes/critiques_du_sujet/sujet- exils.htm http://www.col.fr/arche/article.php3?id_article=136 www.bleublancturc.com/News/Ecriture_exil.htm Nedim Gürsel, Ecriture de l'exil, exil de l'écriture (Writing of exile, exile of writing), in www.bleublancturc.com/News/Ecriture_exil.htm James Joyce, A portrait of the Artist as a young man, p Idem, p Idem, p Franz Kafka: A Judeo-Christian Legacy, by Philip Zard, from the monthly magazine of Judaism “L'Arche” n 569, September 2005 http://www.col.fr/arche/article.php3?id_article=136 Albert Camus, The Fall, p 73 [7]Albert Camus, The Fall, p 118 Ibid, p 72 Kawabata, Snow Country, p 17 Emmanuel Levinas quoted by Philippe Solal, Lecture Lévinassienne de l'Exil levinassian reading of the exile”) in Ecritures de l'Exil, dir. A. Giovanni, L'Harmattan 2006 in http://www.philosophie-en-france.net/Etudes/critiques_du_sujet/sujet- exils.htm Franz Kafka, The Trial, Chapter ten, p 225 Ibid., p 224 Ibid. [...]

[...] Those very feelings suggested by the description of the landscape are undoubtedly the ones of the main character. Besides, his travel, far from being the wandering of a K. or a Clamence, was to lead him to freshness and cleanness embodied by the woman, so as to clean him for his guilt, recover something honesty with himself” he was loosing.[9] Indeed, he intends to find in the woman, Komako, some pureness, thus an exile from his dishonesty, un-authenticity, as Clamence did right after hearing the laugh: trying to find a shelter in women's arm. [...]

[...] With Snow Country, written by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, we are given a different perspective of the exile. Here, the motif appears subtly and quietly as a background in the relationship between Shimamura and Komako. Unlike Kafka or Camus, Kawabata does not imply a tearing separation, a wandering chastisement. Indeed, the Japanese author does not share the European dimension of the modern world, yet we will see that the exile, by being covered with the slighter form of the loneliness, is the universal and cross-cultural experience of the modern man. [...]

[...] The place embodies But the exile is not only obvious through the relational and physical aspect; the impression derives also mostly the psychological process. The effect of his trial or his fall will also result in his going through an exile of his own self. He appears more and more to be a stranger to what he used to be. He grows alienated; he doesn't concentrate on his work as he used to do. Kafka was an exiled too, supporting a double exile: from his Jewish community and his country, the Czech Republic. [...]